Richard Burgheim, a former Time writer and a cofounder of People, argues that the golden age of magazines ended with the ascension of TV in the 1960s. He recalls that Henry Luce eventually "left behind his earlier partisan trespasses" and long felt a mission to build a more informed citizenry. Luce instructed his heirs not to be over beholden to government or even to shareholders. Operating in the public interest didn't mean to him (as it seems to now) whatever the public is interested in. Luce's current successor as editor-in-chief now reports to the C.E.O. and no longer sits on the corporate board. Today's lords of journalism toe the bottom line. Mr. Burgheim does concede, though, that the hallowed weekly Life barely broke even in its 36-year history. And when People followed two years later with an entertainment emphasis, it "roared into the black in 18 months, and at one point accounted for 20 percent of the profits of the whole magazine industry. . . As the media conglomerates become ever more concentrated and grasping, mainstream journalism gets more sensational and trivial." The newsmagazines, he adds, increasingly play up showbiz and lifestyle stories and tap into the national hypochondriasis to hype circulation. According to a recent report, "the local TV newscast--Americans' major source of information--devotes some six-and-a-half minutes of a typical half hour to sports and weather and only 38 seconds to international coverage, including Iraq." But "it's only fair," Mr. Burgheim concludes, "to share the blame with the victim--the escape-seeking, attention-deprived U.S. public." So perhaps the last best hope to smarten American media would be to start with its audience and pour money into the education system that spawned it.